East Indian Cuisine Could Save Your Life

November 29th, 2011

This blog is part of the Preventative Lifestyle: Keeping Your Body Healthy (and cancer-free) blog series. While researching ways to help my cancer-stricken mother, I found a variety of things that can help reduce our risk of cancer. While we cannot guarantee that we will never get cancer, it is important we do what is within our power to lower our risk. Please consult with your doctor before making any significant lifestyle or dietary changes.

East Indians Have Significantly Lower Rates of Cancer

As I was researching the literature on cancer prevention and treatment there was one statistic that struck me as really interesting. East Indians are much less likely to develop cancer. In fact the numbers are staggering. Indians have one fifth as many breast cancers as North Americans of the same age, one eighth as many lung cancers, one ninth as many colon cancers and one fiftieth our rate of prostate cancer (1). And given the fact that Indians are probably exposed to even more carcinogens in their environment than we are in the West this is even more staggering. What could cause such a difference in cancer rates?

Miracle Spice: Turmeric

It is due to the wonder spice Turmeric. Turmeric is the yellow powder that is one of the components of yellow curry. Its anti-inflammatory properties are incredibly powerful. In fact no other food ingredient is more effective at decreasing inflammation in the body. The molecule in turmeric responsible for this effect is curcumin. Recent studies reveal that curcumin inhibits the growth of many cancers such as colon, prostate, ovarian, breast, and brain (2). It also inhibits angiogenesis (the growth of new blood vessels to feed the tumor). And in an experiment done with mice where they exposed the mice to a variety of chemical carcinogens, curcumin prevented the development of a number of cancers (3).

Science Ignores a Folk Remedy

Turmeric has been used in India, China and the Middle east for 2000 years. A brilliant researcher by the name of Professor Bharat Aggarwal, PhD at the the M.D. Anderson Cancer center in Houston, Texas was the first to show that curcumin is very active against cancer in cell cultures (4). Later in 2005 he was able to prove the incredible effects of this compound on breast cancer tumors grafted onto mice, even when these tumors that were no longer responding to chemotherapy. In these mice, administering just a regular dietary dose of curcumin reduced the spread of metastasis significantly (5).

What is interesting, is that his research was initially given no merit by his oncology peers at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Centre. When he approached them with his findings he was brushed off. They felt experiments based on using some folk remedy from traditional ayurvedic medicine had no merit. Yet the science was more than compelling. When he presented his research again but referred to curcumin as the “new pharmaceutical” agent his colleagues took notice. They were amazed and all wanted to know more about this “wonder drug”.

Clinical Trials of Turmeric

Because of such compelling evidence that turmeric has some incredible cancer fighting properties, his colleagues were convinced and many clinical trials have since been launched. The first trial concerns the blood cancer multiple myeloma, the second involves one of the most aggressive and deadliest cancers, the one my Mom had, pancreatic cancer, and the third investigates the possibility of preventing lung cancer in high risk subjects with the active ingredient in Turmeric (curcumin). These human studies are now in progress and the results are not yet known although there is already a huge body of evidence to support the incredible effects of this compound on animals in the lab.

So it seems that Turmeric is a powerful anti-inflammatory that helps stimulate the death of cancer cells and also inhibits the growth of blood vessels to supply a cancerous tumor. In the lab it also enhances the effect of chemotherapy (7) and reduces tumor growth. It seems we should all be eating this but how and how often?

Maximizing the Anti-Inflammatory Benefits of Turmeric

As with many dietary supplements the combination of foods seems instrumental in maximizing the benefit. It seems that turmeric taken by itself or in capsule form is very poorly absorbed through the intestine (6). It appears that if turmeric is not mixed with pepper or ginger (as it is in yellow curry) it will not pass the intestinal barrier. Pepper increases the body’s absorption of turmeric by 2,000 percent. Ideally it must also be dissolved in olive oil. The best and most recommended way to use turmeric for a health benefit is:

I love your article on Curcumin. I was once told by an East Indian friend That his Grandmother would serve them warm milk, honey& tumeric before bed when he was a child. I now drink this often. It has a calming affect.
I also notice that My East indian friend’s don’t get wrinkles? Must be the Tumeric?